Lifeworld

The photos below show Doug Miller and his wife, Stephanie Miller. Doug is one of the most successful natural bodybuilders in the U.S.A. today. He is also a manager at an economics consulting firm and an entrepreneur. As if these were not enough, now he can add book author to his list of accomplishments. His book, Biology for Bodybuilders, has just been published.


Doug studied biochemistry, molecular biology, and economics at the undergraduate level. His co-authors are Glenn Ellmers and Kevin Fontaine. Glenn is a regular commenter on this blog, a professional writer, and a certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. Dr. Fontaine is an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Biology for Bodybuilders is written in the first person by Doug, which is one of the appealing aspects of the book. This also allows Doug to say that his co-authors disagree with him sometimes, even as he outlines what works for him. Both Glenn and Kevin are described as following Paleolithic dieting approaches. Doug follows a more old school bodybuilding approach to dieting – e.g., he eats grains, and has multiple balanced meals everyday.

This relaxed approach to team writing neutralizes criticism from those who do not agree with Doug, at least to a certain extent. Maybe it was done on purpose; a smart idea. For example, I do not agree with everything Doug says in the book, but neither do Doug’s co-authors, by his own admission. Still, one thing we all have to agree with – from a competitive sports perspective, no one can question success.

At less than 120 pages, the book is certainly not encyclopedic, but it is quite packed with details about human physiology and metabolism for a book of this size. The scientific details are delivered in a direct and simple manner, through what I would describe as very good writing.

Doug has interesting ideas on how to push his limits as a bodybuilder. For example, he likes to train for muscle hypertrophy at around 20-30 lbs above his contest weight. Also, he likes to exercise at high repetition ranges, which many believe is not optimal for muscle growth. He does that even for mass building exercises, such as the deadlift. In this video he deadlifts 405 lbs for 27 repetitions.

Here it is important to point out that whether one is working out in the anaerobic range, which is where muscle hypertrophy tends to be maximized, is defined not by the number of repetitions but by the number of seconds a muscle group is placed under stress. The anaerobic range goes from around 20 to 120 seconds. If one does many repetitions, but does them fast, he or she will be in the anaerobic range. Incidentally, this is the range of strength training at which glycogen depletion is maximized.

I am not a bodybuilder, nor do I plan on becoming one, but I do admire athletes that excel in narrow sports. Also, I strongly believe in the health-promoting effects of moderate glycogen-depleting exercise, which includes strength training and sprints. Perhaps what top athletes like Doug do is not exactly optimal for long-term health, but it certainly beats sedentary behavior hands down. Or maybe top athletes will live long and healthy lives because the genetic makeup that allows them to be successful athletes is also conducive to great health.

In this respect, however, Doug is one of the people who have gotten the closest to convincing me that genes do not influence so much what one can achieve as a bodybuilder. In the book he shows a photo of himself at age 18, when he apparently weighed not much more than 135 lbs. Now, in his early 30s, he weighs 210-225 lbs during the offseason, at a height of 5'9". He has achieved this without taking steroids. Maybe he is a good example of compensatory adaptation, where obstacles lead to success.

If you are interested in natural bodybuilding, and/or the biology behind it, this book is highly recommended!

The figure below is one of many in Weston Price’s outstanding book Nutrition and Physical Degeneration showing evidence of teeth crowding among children whose parents moved from a traditional diet of minimally processed foods to a Westernized diet.


Tooth crowding and other forms of malocclusion are widespread and on the rise in populations that have adopted Westernized diets (most of us). Some blame it on dental caries, particularly in early childhood; dental caries are also a hallmark of Westernized diets. Varrela (2007), however, in a study of Finnish skulls from the 15th and 16th centuries found evidence of dental caries, but not of malocclusion, which Varrela reported as fairly high in modern Finns.

Why does malocclusion occur at all in the context of Westernized diets? Lombardi (1982) put forth an evolutionary hypothesis:

“In modern man there is little attrition of the teeth because of a soft, processed diet; this can result in dental crowding and impaction of the third molars. It is postulated that the tooth-jaw size discrepancy apparent in modern man as dental crowding is, in primitive man, a crucial biologic adaptation imposed by the selection pressures of a demanding diet that maintains sufficient chewing surface area for long-term survival. Selection pressures for teeth large enough to withstand a rigorous diet have been relaxed only recently in advanced populations, and the slow pace of evolutionary change has not yet brought the teeth and jaws into harmonious relationship.”

So what is one to do? Apparently getting babies to eat meat is not a bad idea. They may well just chew on it for a while and spit it out. The likelihood of meat inducing dental caries is very low, as most low carbers can attest. (In fact, low carbers who eat mostly meat often see dental caries heal.)

Concerned about the baby choking on meat? At the time of this writing a Google search yielded this: No results found for “baby choked on meat”. Conversely, Google returned 219 hits for “baby choked on milk”.

What if you have a child with crowded teeth as a preteen or teen? Too late? Should you get him or her to use “cute” braces? Our daughter had crowded teeth a few years ago, as a preteen. It overlapped with the period of my transformation, which meant that she started having a lot more natural foods to eat. There were more of those around, some of which require serious chewing, and less industrialized soft foods. Those natural foods included hard-to-chew beef cuts, served multiple times a week.

We noticed improvement right away, and in a few years the crowding disappeared. Now she has the kind of smile that could land her a job as a toothpaste model:


The key seems to be to start early, in developmental years. If you are an adult with crowded teeth, malocclusion may not be solved by either tough foods or braces. With braces, you may even end up with other problems (see this).

One common outcome of doing glycogen-depleting exercise (e.g., strength training, sprinting) in combination with intermittent fasting is an increase in growth hormone (GH) levels. See this post for a graph showing the acute effect on GH levels of glycogen-depleting exercise. This effect applies to both men and women, and is generally healthy, leading to improvements in mood and many health markers.

It is a bit like GH therapy, with GH being “administered” to you by your own body. Both glycogen-depleting exercise and intermittent fasting increase GH levels; apparently they have an additive effect when done together.

Still, a complaint that one sees a lot from people who have been doing glycogen-depleting exercise and intermittent fasting for a while is that their fasting blood glucose levels go up. This is particularly true for obese folks (after they lose body fat), as obesity tends to be associated with low GH levels, although it is not restricted to the obese. In fact, many people decide to stop what they were doing because they think that they are becoming insulin resistant and on their way to developing type 2 diabetes. And, surely enough, when they stop, their blood glucose levels go down.

Guess what? If your blood glucose levels are going up quite a bit in response to glycogen-depleting exercise and intermittent fasting, maybe you are one of the lucky folks who are very effective at increasing their GH levels. The blood glucose increase effect is temporary, although it can last months, and is indeed caused by insulin resistance. An HbA1c test should also show an increase in hemoglobin glycation.

Over time, however, you will very likely become more insulin sensitive. What is happening is compensatory adaptation, with different short-term and long-term responses. In the short term, your body is trying to become a more efficient fat-burning machine, and GH is involved in this adaptation. But in the short term, GH leads to insulin resistance, probably via actions on muscle and fat cells. This gradually improves in the long term, possibly through a concomitant increase in liver insulin sensitivity and glycogen storage capacity.

This is somewhat similar to the response to GH therapy.

The figure below is from Johannsson et al. (1997). It shows what happened in terms of glucose metabolism when a group of obese men were administered recombinant GH for 9 months. The participants were aged 48–66, and were given in daily doses the equivalent to what would be needed to bring their GH levels to approximately what they were at age 20. For glucose, 5 mmol is about 90 mg, 5.5 is about 99, and 6 is about 108. GDR is glucose disposal rate; a measure of how quickly glucose is cleared from the blood.


As you can see, insulin sensitivity initially goes down for the GH group, and fasting blood glucose goes up quite a lot. But after 9 months the GH group has better insulin sensitivity. Their GDR is the same as in the placebo group, but with lower circulating insulin. The folks in the GH group also have significantly less body fat, and have better health markers, than those who took the placebo.

There is such a thing as sudden-onset type 2-like diabetes, but it is very rare (see Michael’s blog). Usually type 2 diabetes “telegraphs” its arrival through gradually increasing fasting blood glucose and HbA1c. However, those normally come together with other things, notably a decrease in HDL cholesterol and an increase in fasting triglycerides. Folks who do glycogen-depleting exercise and intermittent fasting tend to see the opposite – an increase in HDL cholesterol and a decrease in triglycerides.

So, if you are doing things that have the potential to increase your GH levels, a standard lipid panel can help you try to figure out whether insulin resistance is benign or not, if it happens.

By the way, GH and cortisol levels are correlated, which is often why some associate responses to glycogen-depleting exercise and intermittent fasting with esoteric nonsense that has no basis in scientific research like “adrenal fatigue”. Cortisol levels are meant to go up and down, but they should not go up and stay up while you are sitting down.

Avoid chronic stress, and keep on doing glycogen-depleting exercise and intermittent fasting; there is overwhelming scientific evidence that these things are good for you.